[In Lady Blessington's Conversations with Lord Byron these lines are thus introduced: 'I will give you some stanzas I wrote yesterday (said Byron); they are as simple as even Wordsworth himself could write, and would do for music."] BUT once I dared to lift my eyes, In vain sleep shuts them in the night, What still a dream must be. A fatal dream- for many a bar TO THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON You have ask❜d for a verse- the request, In a rhymer, 't were strange to deny; But my Hippocrene was but my breast, And my feelings (its fountain) are dry. Were I now as I was, I had sung What Lawrence has pencill'd so well; But the strain would expire on my tongue, And the theme is too soft for my shell. I am a fool of passion, and a frown Wafts unto death the breast it bore so high; Such is this maddening fascination grown, So strong thy magic or so weak am I. ON THIS DAY I COMPLETE MY THIRTY-SIXTH YEAR [Moore relates in the Life that on his last birthday Byron 'came from his bedroom into the apartment where Colonel Stanhope and some others were assembled and said with a smile, "You were complaining the other day that I never write any poetry now. This is my birthday, and I have just finished something which, I think, is better than what I usually write."- The pathos and sincerity of the verses are echoed in Mangan's The Nameless One, though the spirit of the two poems is not the same.] 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, [It is not necessary to say that these poems are concerned with the separation between Lord Byron and his wife. They are so distinct in character that it has seemed best to separate them from among the other Miscellaneous Poems.] FARE THEE WELL [Moore relates on the authority of Byron's Memoranda that these stanzas were written 'under the swell of tender recollections' as the poet sat one night musing in the study.. the tears falling fast over the paper as he wrote them.' Mr. Coleridge avers that there are no tear-marks on the original draft of the poem. 'Tis pity.] Alas! they had been friends in Youth; But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining — But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, The marks of that which once hath been.' FARE thee well! and if for ever, Would that breast were bared before thee Would that breast, by thee glanced over, 'T was not well to spurn it so. 10 Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now; Back on thy bosom with reflected blight! The widow'd couch of fire, that thou hast spread! |